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I taught for three years in a special, in-house program for non-reading or well behind third graders. We used Project Read, a variant of the Orton-Gillingham method, to jump start our kids. At the end of each year, about half of my class had acquired enough reading skills (not necessarily on level, but reading fairly well) to move on to regular fourth grade. Of the remaining 50%, about half were retained in regular third grade (as opposed to my third grade developmental class they’d been in) with the other half having been tested and diagnosed for placement in special ed with grade placement to be determined by the case conference committee.
The program was local, and it worked. Under Indiana’s current retention law, I’m not sure such a program would have even been attempted.